


The Laws of Chess

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Chess, Gen, Holmes Brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for mid0nz's tumblr contest. John assumes that Sherlock is playing chess by himself. Sherlock lets him think what he will - it's certainly better than admitting to the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Réti

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mid0nz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mid0nz/gifts).



Sherlock, noticing a minute change in the room, glanced over at the chessboard as he tossed his coat onto John’s chair. One of the white bishops had been moved to e5. The black rook previously occupying the position was placed neatly to the side.

Dull.

He waited for a further hour, while he checked various emails and requests to take ridiculous cases of marital unfaithfulness, before he moved the remaining rook onto f2.

When Sherlock awoke the next morning, there was a text waiting for him.

_Pawn to c6_

He huffed at the phone and replied with a succinct

_Piss off SH_

But he still moved the pawn to its requested position before breakfast.


	2. Sicilian Defense

The first time this had happened, back at his place on Montague Street, he’d been insulted. The game he’d been playing with himself while high on cocaine had been reset, and White’s right side knight had been moved forward and to the left.

He hadn’t needed the obvious indication that Mycroft’s agents (and possibly his brother himself) had done a drug search. It was clear from the interruption of the dust line on the bookshelf, not to mention the fact that the couch had been moved several centimeters to the East.

He’d growled at the board and swept all of White’s pieces onto the floor. Mycroft always opened with Réti. It was tedious and predictable. He continued to glare at the pieces scattered about the sitting room floor for exactly 87 hours and 41 minutes.

Then, he grudgingly reset the board, placing the knight back on f3.

It had been another week before his own black pawn moved two spaces forward.

Since then, he and Mycroft had played a total of 53 chess matches. What Sherlock believed began as a poorly veiled attempt at keeping him in check had somehow turned into something resembling a pastime. It was hateful, but Mycroft was the only one who had ever been able to keep him engaged at chess. At least, that was what he told himself.


	3. Bronstein Delay

Sometimes he experimented on the pieces. Always White’s, just to annoy Mycroft. Several of them had been rendered unsalvageable – one of the bishops had been sacrificed to a particularly potent acid, and the queen became some rather magnificent shrapnel embedded in the walls of the sitting room. Neither John nor Mrs. Hudson had been pleased. Mycroft had duly replaced all of his missing pieces but hadn’t been able to duplicate the shade exactly. It probably irked him to no end. Wonderful.

John, never observing the changes to the board that occurred when they were out, assumed he was playing with himself. There was a fair amount of John (Sherlock called it mocking, but John insisted it was good-natured teasing) taking the piss out of him for it, but Sherlock allowed it. Better to let John assume he was egotistically engaged in solo chess matches than let him know he was willingly playing board games with his older brother. And losing. Badly.

But then again, Mycroft had always been better suited for chess than he had – admittedly more familiar with manipulation and world domination.

Then there were the times that he intentionally scrambled the board. He was doing so now, in fact – moving half of the pieces one square to the right, inundating the board with his vanquished black pawns and adding the Cluedo weapons to the melee. John looked up from his newspaper with a snort.

“Was the half of you that’s losing sore about it, or are you just bored with regular chess?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, John. I’m not losing.” Truth be told, the game hadn’t been going well for him. But that was decidedly not the reason for this particular upheaval. Mycroft had gone and promised they would both return to the ancestral home for Mummy’s 70th birthday, and thus had to be taught a lesson. If that happened to correspond with a bad game on his part, it was just happy coincidence.


	4. Zugzwang

They walked into the sitting room on a post-case high, John with his hands full of curry takeaway, when Sherlock noticed something inherently wrong with the chessboard. He left John with the food and went to investigate, finding that the board had been completely reset, but a second black king stood where the white had been.

What the hell was Mycroft doing?

He recognised the replacement piece instantly, one of the antiques clearly taken from Holmes manor. That set, ostentatious ivory and onyx, had belonged to their maternal great-grandfather – a genius by all accounts but rather mentally unhinged, even by Holmesian standards. Was this Mycroft’s absurd way of telling Sherlock he was losing his mind?

The next day, the extra black king had been removed and the board returned to its previous mid-game state, and Sherlock allowed the obscure message to recede to the back of his mind.

It happened again, nearly two months later – the board reset and two black kings facing each other, but this time White’s king was placed directly behind his own regular black, the boxwood dull and ordinary in comparison to the intruder. This figuration made even less sense than the last one, and Sherlock was tempted to text his brother and ascertain his mental health.

The next day he got a text from Jim Moriarty.


	5. Blackburne's Mate

There was a chessboard set up in Mycroft’s library. It used to be a copy of the one in Baker Street, though this was the bone set he’d inherited from their father. Siger Holmes had assumed, rightly so, that his younger son would sooner experiment on it than appreciate its craftsmanship. Sherlock himself had been furious when he’d seen it there, calling Mycroft a cheater for having the board in front of him. When the elder Holmes smugly implied that Sherlock had just admitted to needing a handicap when they played, he had entered a magnificent sulk and refused to continue their game for a solid five weeks.

Lately, though, the board hadn’t been used for chess. Mycroft had turned it into a sort of tactical planner, systematically removing pieces each time Sherlock or one of his other agents had taken out part of Moriarty’s network. It had looked sparse for the past few months – empty but for the white king and one of the black knights. Sebastian Moran proved himself more elusive than either Holmes had expected, and he’d kept Sherlock away for much longer than the man intended.

Now, something had changed.

The chessboard had been reset. His customary right-side knight and the corresponding black pawn had been moved forward to their usual positions. Mycroft was briefly confused before realisation struck and he took in the signs that he wasn’t alone in the room, allowing himself to indulge in a brief smile. His intruder had got muddy footprints on the Persian rug and helped himself to the plate of scones Mycroft had been saving for tea, but that hardly mattered now. A quick look around revealed what he’d been searching for – there was a figure stretched along the length of the sofa.

Tufts of light brown hair – poorly cut with a bad dye job – were the only things visible. The rest of him was hidden underneath the soft red blanket Mrs. Hudson had knitted him three Christmases ago. Mycroft had insisted the gift was unnecessary, tried to persuade the woman against it when she’d asked what colour he wanted. He’d only acquiesced when she finally admitted that Sherlock had paid her to make the afghan for him.

Sentiment.

If his little brother were tired enough to sleep in the library, he should probably leave him be and let him wake on his own. But after years of minimal contact through barely secure channels, he needed some reassurance. As gently as he could, Mycroft tugged down a corner of the blanket, just to get a glimpse.

It was useless. Sherlock jerked awake at the movement, his first instinct to flinch away and scramble upright, not seeming to recognise his surroundings. He was taking in heavy, ragged breaths – too fast for Mycroft’s comfort, bordering on panic. Eyes darted around the room unseeingly until Mycroft gently shook Sherlock’s shoulder, forcing his brother to focus on him. Realisation and relief washed over his face and Sherlock slumped against the sofa with a shaky exhale.

“I couldn’t – I didn’t remember…”

“It’s alright,” Mycroft soothed, almost concerned when Sherlock didn’t immediately snarl away from the contact. “How are you? Any pressing injuries I should know about?”

“M’fine.”

“Sherlock.”

“Think I cracked a rib a week or so ago. Too late to do anything about it now. Gash on my left leg from a messy jump out of a window, but I’ve been keeping it fairly clean.” He looked up and gave a little smirk. “Could do with a good cuppa.”

“That can be arranged. Moran?”

“Dead.”

“How sure are you?”

“Immeasurably.” The stared at each other for a few seconds, Mycroft trying to glean information from his brother and seeing only a sort of resigned weariness.

“Good, that’s good. Still, I’ll have the others check for anyone we may have missed. It never hurts to be thorough. And I’ll call the doctor, have her give you a proper looking-over.” Sherlock nodded and gave a vague wave of his hand as Mycroft fired off several texts. “You should have told me you were coming,” he murmured, watching Sherlock’s eyes droop helplessly closed again. “I would have had Margaret set up your old room.”

“Sofa’s more comfortable,” he mumbled. “Bedroom’s got too many bad memories.”

“Alright.” Another glance made him realise that Sherlock was only minutes away from sleep, if that, and he had to work to keep the fond smile from showing. “The tea can wait; you look done in. Rest.” Sherlock grumbled an affirmative-sounding response and shifted a bit lower on the sofa.

“Don’t suppose you could spare a pillow for your poor, beleaguered little brother.”

Mycroft took in his appearance calculatingly – new wrinkles, a couple of grey hairs not masked by the dye, and a distressing tendency to jump at the slightest noise – before sitting on the sofa himself and gently tugging his brother to lie down again. Sherlock started at the touch but didn’t fight it, looking up at him in annoyance from his new position, head pillowed on Mycroft’s leg.

“I don’t need a nanny, do you mind?” But even as he said it, the tension began seeping out of his frame. Mycroft pulled the afghan back up over his shoulders, allowed his hand to start carding through Sherlock’s dirty, unkempt hair, and the boy gave a contented little sigh in spite of himself.

“Sleep well, brother dear. You’re safe.” Sherlock mumbled something unintelligible that may have been Hindi in return, and relaxed completely, asleep in seconds.

Later, there would be difficult conversations, bureaucratic machinations to bring his brother back from the dead and clear his name. Their truce wouldn’t last forever – he suspected it would be over the minute Sherlock had been reinstated as The World’s Only Consulting Detective and was happily back in Baker Street with his blogger. But for now, he was safe and mostly sound, a comforting, warm weight against Mycroft’s thigh. And that was enough to be getting on with.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Laws of Chess](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9465329) by [bagofthumbs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bagofthumbs/pseuds/bagofthumbs)




End file.
